Tag: medium

Ushio to Tora takes yet another detour in Ushio’s journey to Hokkaido to find out more about her mother, but this was a very worthwhile one, checking in on Asako and Mayuko, who miss him. Asako misses him more, and is sighing all the time. All her girlfriends and Mayuko no why, though she won’t come out and admit it.

Meanwhile, Ushio is back with the kamaitachi siblings, and happens to see an alarmed Asako crying out Mayuko’s name in a mirror formed by a still pond. When he tells Kagari and Raishin what he’s seen, they take him to a youkai who specializes in mirror portals so he can go rescue them. Before they’re in trouble, Mayuko gets Asako to kinda-sorta admit she misses Ushio, recalling the story of how Ushio rescued a handicraft project the two girls worked on from a wild dog and carried Asako home.

Asako, of course already remembers this memory well, having recently dreamed of it. Mayuko’s assertion is that Ushio will come back, just as he always does. I’ll just remark at how adorable Asako and Mayuko are, both in younger-kid flashback mode and wistful reminiscing mode.

It’s not all peaches and cream though, as an deranged, woman-loving youkai emerges from Mayuko’s antique mirror and lunges at Asako. Mayuko puts her body in the way, and she gets glomped up. But it isn’t long before Ushio and Tora show up (thanks to another mirror, which is awfully darned convenient, but who cares!). Asako tags along on their journey into the mirror demon’s mirror world, and wrest a naked, passed-out Mayuko from his clutches, all in less time than it takes for water to come to a boil.

Again, Asako finds herself being carried by a scratched up Ushio, realizing it’s him with the spear and long hair, as it was the last time in the belly of that giant youkai a few weeks back. Yet again, the girls are so woozy and disoriented, they seem to dismiss the events merely as strange dreams they had. That doesn’t mean those dreams were reflective of their real affection for Ushio and Tora; it just means that when the time comes for sleepover girl talk, they’re too embarrassed to mention their “dreams” to each other!

Overall, a very warm and cute episode that underscores how close these three characters are and makes it very clear why they care for each other so much. Even in an episode where the girls get saved by the guys once again, Mayuko showed her own heroic side by stepping between Asako and the youkai, while Asako showed guts by following Ushio into the mirror to save Mayuko. I was also just missing Asako and Mayuko, so this episode was just what I needed!

Another week, another supernatural task-of-the-week for the titular Ushio and Tora. This time, while bathing in a healing hot spring, they encounter a beautiful white-haired girl whom they accidentally startle away. That girl, Saya, is the latest in a long line of white-haired women who have served as intermediary between the wealthy and powerful Takatori family and their “household god”, in truth a zashiki warashi being held against her will.

Saya is very sickly and frail, and prone to fainting spells, which is how Ushio meets her next: saving her from one of anime’s patented Killer Vehicles. Saya is prone to overapologizing, and when Ushio learns the reason why—a life of being used as little more than a tool to keep her shithead father and grandmother rich and comfy— he’s very pissed off and wants to do something to help.

It just so happens that Omamori-sama, the captive zashiki warashi, had been expecting a lad with a spear since Saya’s dad was young, warning him when such a lad arrived, it would mean the end of his prosperity and good fortune and the beginning of his ruin. Omamori is also sick of watching white-haired woman after woman life and die “consoling” her, and would prefer at this point to die herself when the barrier is broken rather than continue this vicious cycle. Saya brought Ushio and Tora to talk about freeing her, but she’s obviously against Omamori dying.

As Tora (once a captive himself) surprises Omamori with his relative kindness and loyalty to his human by opening a temporary tear in the barrier, Omamori convinces Saya to seek a better life than the one she has; aiming higher than being a servant her lazy cheat relatives. The barrier breaks, the househould literally crumbles, and Omamori floats away in a gorgeous ethereal way.

Saya and her family now have nothing, and it will be tough going, but at least she’s now free to live her life and explore heretofore untapped strength and ability…like the ability to stop reflexively apologizing and tell Ushio an idiot when he flirts with her! I’m a little disappointed Saya and Omamori don’t accompany Ushio and Tora on their quest, but the whole point after all is for them to stand on their own two feet. Maybe they’ll show up again down the road.

P[anty]line continued its trend of creating more questions than it answers. It tosses a lot of plot and character elements out, hoping some of them stick to the wall, and some of them do. But its small successes are undermined by a stubborn lack of focus, and its underlying. There’s a lot of juicy intrigue lurking beneath the surface, but PL doesn’t seem that interested in letting us in. It’s un-ironic propensity for showing panties for panties’ sake doesn’t inspire confidence it ever will.

Part of our frustration stems from Yuuta’s molasses-slow progress. Sure, he’s now able to manipulate objects and even briefly possesses and talks through Rabura, but this progress is meaningless if he doesn’t capitalize on it. All he manages to do in his seven minutes as Rabura is thoroughly confuse the girls.

For the rest of the episode, Yuuta is back to being an inert observer. Instead we’re treated to a weird date Rabura set up with a gentleman caller she claims is from Gliese 832c, who turns out to be an NSA agent who was only using Rabura to try to initiate contact with Daihatsu Meika, whom the U.S. believes is the best person to try to eliminate the virus enabling the Qmay Group to prevent the launch of orbital nukes at an approaching asteroid. If the agent is to be believes, Qmay is actively trying to eliminate the human race. So I guess they’re nihilists?

Rabura isn’t happy about being used, but still protects “Gliese-sama” when he’s attacked by “Miya-ken”, which brings me to my next grievance with this show, along with its scattered nature: I really don’t like Miya-ken. After Samurai Flamenco, I’m all hapless Super Sentai’d out. He helped out last week, but his presence here is baffling, and not in the way that makes me want to find out.

I liked how the NSA agent created a rift between Rabura and Meika, with the former taking out her frustrations on the latter. There’s a familial vibe to their drying-off around the kontatsu scene, but then Rabura’s frustration leads her to lash out at Ito, who then turns on Mikatan, mocking her efforts to be the “good girl” and “hero.”

All this fresh clashing of obviously very different personalities is welcome, but it all feels a but rushed and inorganic, especially considering what we’ve learned from these characters thus far via flashbacks. Speaking of those, in the one in the cold open, we see a young Mikatan as one of many captive child test subjects. But it left on the back burner the rest of the episode, like Yuuta’s half-assed possession attempt.

This show is full of enticing tastes of things, but at the end of the day it’s just a bit too all over the place.

Punchline has generally a lot of fun to watch, but I’ve found myself struggling to like it as much as I want to, mainly due to its erratic personality. Rather than simply straddle various genres, it tries to operate in every genre, which is a tough proposition for any new show on the block, because it risks not offering enough of one thing to satisfy anyone. It’s throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us, but I’m almost too busy dodging it all to appreciate when something sticks.

It’s one thing to keep your audience guessing or on their toes; it’s another to frustrate them by constantly tripping them up. So, did this third episode do anything to put the show’s meandering milieu into focus? Yes and no. It offered perhaps more randomness than previous two episodes, but it gradually built the foundation of something recognizable and admirable, which is this: Korai House is no ordinary teanament.

“Yeah, we kinda figured that,” you say, but while we knew everything was weird, we didn’t know why until now. Korai house, in fact, is the headquarters for a force for good, in a world that may be ending on the 31st of December. As such, it has drawn numerous seemingly disparate individuals into its walls.

This all comes to the fore when, in a random attack by some weird masked commando with a turtle biting his junk destroys Mikatan’s mask in an effort to kidnap Ito’s pet bear cub, revealing the secret identity Mikatan worked so hard to keep from Ito, Mrs. Doubtfire-style, before.

Another “freak” appears in a spandex bodysuit, who is ineffectual against the commando at first, but beats him back with authority after a brief trip into Korai House to do…something that powers him up.

We also get the reveal that Meika is a robot built by a famous genius inventor who told her one day a girl (Mikatan) would come to Korai and Meika would raise her up to be the superheroine she is now. I’m guessing bodysuit guy’s a robot too.

How the scientist knew all that, along with how the bear healed from a bad knife wound so quickly, and how, if ever, Yuuta will get his body back, are questions that remain unanswered this week. But even though there was still a lot of volatility in the storytelling, I came away from this third episode with a slightly clearer picture of what’s going on.

What still concerns me, however, is the humor, which can be juvenile and obvious at times. Meika and Mikatan’s easily misinterpretable chat elicited some chuckles, but Yuuta blowing up the world at the slightest glance at panties is wearing thin fast.

First, the good news: Punchline doesn’t belabor its admittedly dumb “guy gains power by looking at panties” concept; in fact, he doesn’t blow up the Earth once this week! Instead, there was quite a bit of halfway-decent world-building in play this week, with the world in question being Korai House, which feels like a purgatory where its tenants are safe from the harsh reality of the outside world.

The bad news is that Chiranousuke the cat’s perverted character is already played out, because he’s little more than a font of exposition and lame boob jokes. Also, Yuuta has very little to do this week, and while I like the fact the show feels it doesn’t need to rely on its protagonist to carry and episode, nearly excising him from just the second episode when we barely knew him was a risk. I’m not sure it totally paid off, but I appreciate the fact such a risk was made.

Mikatan acts as a kind of a cupid of cheer this week, even as she rushes to switch off the TV when her super-heroic alter ego is being interviewed. Here at Korai House, her heroism is limited to offering apple pie, cinnamon, and understanding to Lovera, who is depressed about being a fake exorcist who doesn’t even believe in spirits.

Despite this, she wants to carry on her family legacy. And while spirit-Yuuta doesn’t do much, he does manage to break a vase Lovera was trying to get the spirit she thinks is there to break. We also get a flashback similar to the one in which he met Mikatan, in which we learn that Yuuta’s sister was once a tenant too, which is how he knew and became pretty close to Lovera. Not romantically, mind you (there’s a clear age difference), but as a little brother-slash-shoulder to cry (or complain) on.

As Yuuta floats about unseen and unheard, the girls unite in the room of Ito, who despite several increasingly desperate and funny attempts to do so, is unable to conceal the fact she’s harboring a rescue bear cub, in violation of Korai House’s no-pets policy. Meika is ready to throw the book at Ito, but Mika and Lovera talk her down, convincing her to allow further investigation of said abandoned bear prior to summary judgment.

After the confrontation in Ito’s room, Mika joins Meika on the roof (where Yuuta is also hanging out) and ponders why Ito is a hermit who no longer goes to school. We then flash back to Yuuta playing a video game and then hearing someone shouting next door as he’s beaten, confirming that the person who beat him is in fact his neighbor Ito. Her truancy has afforded her ample time to get very good at MMOs.

This is my favorite Yuuta flashback, because he neither bumped into Ito nor knew her through his older sister. Rather, the two met each other through an activity they mutually enjoy, and sensing she was in need of a little escape, showed her a beautiful secret place in the game even she didn’t know about. He’s not able to say much without being branded “insensitive”, but he was able to do something that put a smile on her face.

Then Mika (and we) learn what he knows from Meika: that her father is a powerful politician who essentially disowned her because she was a liability. Furthermore, even as her neighbors plan a party to cheer her up, she appears on an online New Year’s list of “victims,” making us curious as to what “craziness” exactly went down at school to cause her to stop going.

Sakamichi no Apollon. Zankyou no Terror. Shingeki no Bahamut. GARO. All shows from the Maruyama Animation Produce Project Association, or MAPPA. All regarded by RABUJOI staffers as well worth the effort of watching them.

Which brings us to Punchline. Despite knowing nothing about it going in, I knew it probably wouldn’t be crap, because nothing from MAPPA has been crap. Disappointing or inconsistent in parts, perhaps? Sure. But each of those other shows also had sparks of true greatness that again, made us glad we tuned in.

In the first five minutes, our ignorance of what Punchline is about was thoroughly washed away, and the protagonist Yuuta gains superpowers and saves a bus full of people, along with the two young women who were trying to save said bus. And how do those powers awaken, you might ask? When he sees a woman’s panties. That’s right: his powers turn on…when he turns on. Which…I’m not going to lie, is kinda dumb. BUT.

Fortunately, fanservice and sophomoric hero dynamics aren’t all Punchline has to offer. Right after saving that bus, the bad guy possesses his body and kicks his spirit—everything that makes Yuuta Yuuta—out, leaving him a roaming, body-less spirit.

Even so, his powers are still activated by the sight of panties, but if he gets too turned on, he ends up incinerating the Earth. Ask me how I know all this (yes, it was a talking cat…why the heck wouldn’t it be?) The cat is able to turn back time and un-destroy the world, so Yuuta has a second chance to look for a book that will help him get his body back.

Interestingly, Yuuta himself is voiced by a female, namely Inoue Marina (whom I know best as Zetsubou-sensei’s Kitsu Chiri). That’s one strong voice cast, and they all excel at bringing their distinctively-designed charges to life. None of them can see him, but Lovera can sorta detect him, being a medium and all. We’ll see how he ends up reconnecting with them.

Still, even she doesn’t detect him this week. Instead, Yuuta resolves not to get to excited and re-destroy the earth, and meanwhile Meika scours the news for bad guys doing bad stuff and sends out Mikatan in her alter ego as superheroine “Strange Orange.”

Her maho-shojo-style transformation scene is nicely subverted by a picture-in-picture showing what’s actually going on: that she’s just doing an awkward little dance and has to put on her costume the old-fashioned way. That means disrobing in front of Yuuta, who somehow manages to suppress an apocalyptic reaction.

The anointment of powers on Yuuta through means that ensure a steady dose of ecchi will pervade Punchline is mitigated by the fact that other than his heroic bus act he doesn’t have that dominating a role in this episode, despite the fact he’s in almost every frame. He’s an inert observer, watching a side of his neighbors he never knew. I also enjoyed all the various elaborate ways his nose ended up bleeding. There’s quite a bit of appealing Kill la Kill zaniness to the animation in general.

There’s also whole double-edged sword of those powers of his, which demand a certain degree of moderation and restraint—a lesson I hope Punchline will take to heart. When he does blow up the world a second time, before the very cute (and non-ecchi) credits roll—it’s not because he perversely seeks out girls’ panties, but simply the fact that a “Chekhov’s loose thread” in Meika’s knit dress gets caught in Mikatan’s motorcycle, causing it to rapidly unravel. IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYBODY.